Can you change the default grading scheme in Canvas?

[mlagrow]

I'm working with an institution that would like to change the default grading scheme that is used whenever a new course is created so the scheme doesn't have to be adjusted or added manually each time. Is this possible?

[garth]

 @martin_lagrow  absolutely.

Take a look at this how-to:  How do I create a grading scheme for a course?

After you create your grading scheme, you'll need to enable it in the course:  How do I enable a grading scheme for a course?​

Hopefully that answers the question? 

[mlagrow]

Hi!

I know how to create the grading scheme for the course, but we want to take the task out of the hands of the instructors. Whenever a new course is created, the default Canvas grading scheme is applied. If we can change that default scheme to match the institutions scheme, nobody ever has to go in and change it manually in the course. So is that possible? Can the actual default Canvas template be changed so we DON'T have to manually change it every time there is a new course?

[garth · Accepted solution]

 @martin_lagrow ​ thanks for the clarification.

For our institution I have written a script to accept a list of courses and call the API to apply a specific grading standard to those courses.

Why a list of courses?

Because some faculty do customize their grading scheme and we don't want to step on their toes. 

We generate a provisioning report, delete the rows we don't want to touch, then feed the file into a workflow.

We can also run the algorithm with a flag set to only look for courses that don't have a grading scheme applied, and automatically apply the grading scheme of our choice.  This way we can quickly run a sanity check without having to provide a file.  This is useful towards the end of the semester, in case someone has accidentally disabled the grading standard (which has happened).

Here are the general steps we take to set a grading standard for a course that does not have one applied:

• Get course settings, see this API definition: 
  Courses - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation - Get course settings​
  
  
• If course.grading_standard_enabled is "false", update the course grading standard using the parameter course[grading_standard_id], see this API definition:
  Courses - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation - Update a course

You can get a list of your grading_standard_id's from this API call:
Grading Standards - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation - List Grading Standards

In your case, you can simply iterate through your courses and overwrite any existing grading standard that is applied.  You could do this prior to publishing the courses, then faculty could customize their grading scheme without getting overwritten by your application of a default grading standard.

I hope this helps.

[mlagrow]

Excellent! Thank you!